


so perfect, so bitter; we laugh then we choke

by easternepiphany



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternepiphany/pseuds/easternepiphany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Britta leaves Greendale after Jeff walks out on her at the Transfer Dance. They find each other anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so perfect, so bitter; we laugh then we choke

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Brella!!!! ♥

The brakes of the Green Line squeal and moan as the train twists and curves down Commonwealth Avenue. Britta sits among the Boston University students on their way from their dorm rooms to the dining halls, unintentionally eavesdropping on their complaints about papers and midterms and their plans for spring break. It’s hard to think of spring now, in mid-March, when there’s still snow on the ground.

The group of students gets off and Britta turns back to her phone as the T goes underground toward downtown. She’s lost cell service but she can still read the email she has pulled up; it’s from Shirley, her weekly update on her family and her life. Ever since she got back with Andre a few years ago, she sounds happier, and even though Britta has yet to get back to Colorado to meet him and approve, she’s glad for Shirley’s successes.

Her life at Greendale feels like a world away, but she supposes that’s what happens when you sneak away in the middle of June, pack your car and go. She chose Boston because she’d never been there, found a cheap apartment in Allston amidst college students, and braved the long commute to Bunker Hill Community College every day, switching from the Green Line to the Orange Line, from BU students to elderly Asian couples toting grocery bags. And after got that Associate’s, the first degree she ever held, she transferred to UMass Boston, traded the Orange Line for the Red, for people in business suits and heels. She spends most of her days on the train but she’s gotten really good at knitting, and it allows her to tackle the dense readings for her sociology classes. She has two semesters to go until her Bachelor’s.

She gets off the train at Copley and takes the steps out of the station two at a time. It’s finally starting to get a little warmer, at least not freezing enough for Britta to have to spend hours bundling up before leaving her apartment. The snow is beginning to melt and everything is slushy and dirty. She stomps through it as she makes her way down Boylston Street, her boots cutting paths through the wet sidewalk. It’s Sunday, and she likes to spend her weekends downtown, people-watching or just walking. Her break starts in another week and while she had hoped to maybe fly back to Greendale, her bank account has resigned her to Massachusetts, to picking up extra hours at the animal shelter where she works and at the women’s shelter where she volunteers. It’s not all that bad, really.

She rounds into Starbucks for something to warm her hands. The place is crowded—this one always is—and she types out an email response to Shirley while she waits in line. The barista hands her her coffee and she makes her way over to the milk cart for half-and-half and sugar.

“Excuse me,” she says as she reaches across a man in a wool coat to grab a stirrer. Her hand brushes his sleeve and the material is somehow both soft and scratchy against her skin.

“Britta?”

She jumps and the stirrer falls into her coffee, sinking to the bottom and out of reach. Her heart leaps into her throat and she looks up—he’s taller than her, of course, because he always was, that freakishly large bastard—and there he is.

The last time she saw Jeff Winger she had just told him she loved him and he walked out of the room. She was humiliated and hurt and, unable to separate her actual feelings for Jeff with her need to compete with Michelle Slater, she took a page out of his book and ran, picked up and moved and left Greendale behind. Left him behind the same way she did the town and school.

“Jeff,” she says, looking up, resigned.

He looks the same, a little older, but his hair is still artfully styled into faux-bedhead and his one day of stubble is just scruffy enough. His eyes are wide with surprise and he makes a move as if to lean in to hug her but stays suspended, unsure.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

She grabs a spoon and tries to fish the coffee stirrer out of her cup. “Lamenting that I didn’t stop at Dunkin instead. I didn’t know you were in Boston.”

“What, do you live here?”

She nods, confused. “Shirley didn’t tell you?”

“You still talk to Shirley?”

There’s a pause, because she’s not sure if he’s joking or not, but he looks serious enough and she points to a table that’s just opened up. “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course.” Britta feels a little bad because he looks overwhelmed, so she settles into the seat across from him and takes a long sip of coffee.

He’s wearing a sweater and jeans beneath his coat, and everything about his outfit looks expensive. She knows he graduated early, so she assumes he’s gotten back into his old world pretty seamlessly.

“So, uh,” he begins, looking more out of place than she’s ever seen him, “you’ve been here this whole time.”

“This whole time,” she confirms. “I go to school here. You really didn’t know?”

He gestures toward his face. “Does it look like I knew?”

She laughs. “I guess not. You look kinda pale, actually. Are you going to throw up?”

“No, I—” He leans back a little in his seat and then forward again. “You look different. Not bad different. You look good, I just... I feel like you’re a ghost. Is that stupid?”

“A little,” she says with a smirk. “I was in my twenties the last time we saw each other.”

“Ah, so that’s it. You’ve got that thirties haze around you now that indicates your life is pretty much over.”

She rolls her eyes. “Thanks.”

“You go to school?”

“Yeah, UMass. I’m graduating in December. Sociology.”

He nods slowly. “Sociology. That’s good for you. Social work?”

“How did you know?”

“Just a guess.”

She takes another sip of coffee. “You’re a lawyer again.”

“That’s why I’m here, actually. A client of our firm is being extradited back to Colorado and I’m here to meet with him before he’s moved.”

“Ah, defending criminals again?”

He looks down at the table and traces the Starbucks logo on his cup. “You take what you can get.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he sighs, “that when you fake your degree people aren’t clamoring to hire you once you have a real one. My old firm offered me a job, and I couldn’t find anything else and I had to pay the rent, so I took it. It’s not permanent but the money’s good and it’s all legit this time.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s fine,” he says with a wave of his hand. “After all, how else would I have scammed them into paying for an extra day by lying and telling them I couldn’t get an early enough flight tomorrow morning?”

“Of _course_ you did.”

“Got them to pay for the Fairmont, too.” He raises an eyebrow and she rolls her eyes.

“Douchey rich guy hotel. Perfect for you.”

“Don’t hate, those beds are _comfortable_.”

She laughs and he laughs and they look at each other for a minute. It’s weird, to be sitting at a table in a Starbucks with Jeff Winger, now, after all this time. Maybe he feels it, too, because he finishes his coffee and looks at his watch. “What are you doing today?”

“Uh, nothing. Why?”

“This is my first time in Boston and I’m only here until tomorrow afternoon. I could really use a local to show me around.”

His face is earnest, eyes wide, and the last time she saw him look like this, they were sitting on a bunk bed and he was pushing hair out of her face. The smart thing would be to say no and get on the train to go back home, but there's something holding her back. Would it be so bad, she thinks, to spend one afternoon with him? Their time together has an expiration date; in another thirty hours he’ll be on the other side of the country again.

"Sure," she says.

They leave their seats and venture outside into the cold. They’re silent as they walk down Boylston Street and Britta is hyper-aware of their height difference, which is something she hasn’t thought about in years: how _tall_ Jeff Winger is, how there’s so much of him, how he has to fold himself into places like chairs at Starbucks and car seats, how he towers over her and how it goes against every single one her values to admit that she kind of likes that about him.

“How often do you talk to Shirley?” he asks as they stop at a crosswalk and wait for the light to change.

“I was actually just writing her an email before I ran into you. Maybe once a week?”

“Ah. So when she told all of us she didn’t know where you were or how to get in touch with you, she was lying.”

“She said that?”

“Yeah. And then I tried to call you and it said your number was disconnected.”

“I changed providers when I moved and they wouldn’t let me keep my number. You tried to call me?”

He shrugs sheepishly. “I thought I owed you that, at least.”

The light changes and they step off the curb, shuffled in the crowd crossing the street. “That’s the Public Library,” she says, pointing. “And Copley Square right there.”

His arm reaches for hers but he pulls it away before they touch. “Britta. Did Shirley ever tell you—”

“About you and Annie?” she finishes, her tone light. “Yeah, she told me. Sorry to hear things didn’t work out between you.”

“Are you?” he asks quietly.

She looks up at him. “Yes. I am.”

A firetruck speeds by, sirens wailing. Traffic stops for a minute as it passes and it’s enough to snap Britta back to the present. Jeff’s hand, so close to her elbow, gets shoved into his coat pocket.

“There’s a Burberry a block over. You wanna go?”

“Sure.”

They sift through racks of ridiculously overpriced trenchcoats and Britta pretends to gag on the smell of cologne. She makes him try on $300 jeans and she pretends to take pictures with her phone and Tweet as he rolls his eyes. As payback, he makes her try on a dress that costs more than her rent and he laughs but she doesn’t miss the way his eyes rake over her hips and she has the sudden mental image of his naked body beneath the fluorescent lights of the Greendale library. She hurries back into the dressing room.

Soon they’re heading into every overpriced, fancy store on Newbury Street and Britta finds that it’s easier when they’re moving or doing something or bantering. As he steps into four-figure loafers she wonders if this is what it could have been like if she’d stayed: the two of them ragging on each other and killing time on Sunday afternoons doing mundane things.

The sun sets and they grab slices of pizza and eat them while walking through the Public Gardens.

“You picked a shitty time to visit,” Britta says. “It’s much prettier in the springtime.”

“Maybe I’ll see it one day.”

There’s a bench that isn’t wet from the snow and she sits down and he follows.

“Are you happy here?”

A woman walks by with a dog and Britta watches. The dog paws at the snow before the woman pulls him away. “Yeah, it’s good. I work at an animal shelter and sometimes on the weekends I volunteer at a women and children’s shelter. I like my classes and I have friends. I go on dates sometimes. I can’t complain.”

“You look happy. Like you belong.”

“I do?”

“You do.”

“Congratulations, by the way. On graduating early. I should have told you before.”

“Thank you.”

It’s a lot colder now that it’s dark and she shivers a little, folding her arms across her chest. Her thigh is almost touching his and she resists the urge to move closer, steal some of his body heat.

“This is going to sound like a stupid line,” he says, “but do you want to go back to my douchey rich guy hotel room? There’s a stocked minibar that the firm is paying for _and_ I’m really freezing my ass off out here.”

“It does sound like a stupid line.” She stands up and slings her bag over her shoulder. “But I never say no to free booze.”

Halfway to the Fairmont Jeff slips an arm around her waist, loosely, as if he’s asking her permission. She leans into him a bit and he tightens his grip. He smells like the cold and coffee and the Burberry cologne she sprayed on him. He smells—inexplicably; this must be in her head—like the Greendale library and paintballs and chicken fingers.

They don’t say anything until they’re in the elevator. He pushes the button for the third floor and as it rises he smiles at her, a little unsurely, and she laughs and shakes her head.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she says, because the surreality of it is beginning to get to her.

He unlocks the door and motions for her to step inside first. “Holy shit, Winger,” she says as she takes it in. “This is the douchiest hotel room I’ve ever seen.”

“Impressive, huh?” He hangs their coats in the closet and toes off his shoes. “Grab something to drink, will you? I’m just going to pee.”

Britta rummages through the minibar, setting aside tiny bottles of vodka, rum, and scotch, as well as a giant bag of M&Ms. She brings it all up to the bed and _damn_ was he right because the bed is like a cloud and she can’t help but sink into the pillows with a content sigh. He joins her after a minute, staying to his own side and his own pillows, though.

“I could live in this bed,” she says. “Do you think they’d notice if I smuggled it out?”

“Probably.” He picks up the bottles and the M&Ms and moves them to the nightstand.

She turns to face him, confused, but when he settles back down he’s staring at her with this _look_ and maybe she forgot how much she liked him, maybe loved him, how she spent every day with him for an entire year, how he once fit against her so perfectly.

His mouth comes down over hers and his hand winds through her hair as he cups the back of her head. He tastes like mouthwash; he must have rinsed his mouth in the bathroom, and she’s self-conscious of her pizza breath. He doesn’t seem to mind though, as his tongue slides against hers, and he tugs her closer still. She hooks a leg over his hip and he groans into her mouth.

He pulls away and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “Why did you leave?”

“Jeff, I don’t want to talk—”

“We miss you. I miss you. I’m sorry I walked out on you, it was dumb but I was scared.”

She frowns and reaches up to trace one of his laugh lines with her fingertip. It’s strange, to think of Jeff Winger with laugh lines. It’s strange to think of him laughing, maybe with Annie, maybe with other women, once upon a time with her.

“It was _years_ ago, Jeff. I’m over it. I really am.”

“You didn’t even call. Or, I don’t know, Facebook.”

She sighs and sits up a little. “When you’re trying to get your life back on track, you don’t go back to your _hometown_. You don’t lay down roots in a place you hate. You don’t find six people you love when you know you’re eventually going to leave them. It was a clean break. It was easier that way.”

He scoffs. “Abed called it. He once said to me that your defining weakness was that you cut and run.”

“Not everything is about _you_ , you know,” she snaps.

“I never said it was. But you could have at least said goodbye or kept in touch or something. You didn’t tell anyone you were leaving.”

“I told Shirley.”

“A lot good that did the rest of us.”

“That’s not my fault. I think she thought she was protecting me by not saying anything to you, which is stupid because I don’t need protecting.”

“You’re still so goddamn stubborn.”

“And you’re not? Why can’t you just let it go?” She slides off the bed and steps into one of her boots. “Does it matter what happened three years ago?”

“So you’re going to leave again?” he asks quietly. His hair is mussed from her fingers and lips swollen from her mouth. “Britta. Just... let’s talk about it. Or not. Whatever. Just don’t go.”

She sighs and takes her boot back off. “Why bother?”

“We were friends, once upon a time. You were my favorite friend, remember?”

She stretches out next to him again. “I remember.”

“You wanna order some food?”

“Chocolate cake?” she asks.

He laughs. “Sure.” He leans in and presses a chaste kiss to her lips before jumping up and digging out the room service menu. While he’s on the phone, Britta goes back to the minibar and finds some orange juice and makes them each a screwdriver. The vodka is the good, strong, expensive stuff, and by the time the cake arrives Britta already feels it.

They settle back on the bed with cake and drinks and it’s easy again; she hooks her right leg over his left and their elbows keep bumping.

(“You’re sitting on the wrong side of me,” she says.

“You sat down first. You know I’m left-handed. This is your fault.”)

It’s after nine by the time they’re finished and Britta drains the rest of her glass and moves to stand up. “I have class in the morning. I should probably go.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, it takes about half an hour to get home from here, and I still have some reading to do. What time is your flight tomorrow?”

“I’m leaving straight from the prison. I have to be there at eleven and then my flight’s at two.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

She moves their empty plates to the desk for something to do. She knew this was coming, that this was a very temporary thing, and she thought she had steeled herself against this. She hasn’t thought about him in years, really, never more than a passing memory, but now here he is and she isn’t sure how she can walk away again.

“What time is your class? You can take a cab, I’ll have work pay for it.”

“Damn, Winger,” she says in what she hopes is a joking tone, “what do you do over there that they’re willing to shell out the big bucks for you?”

He reaches out and tugs on her arm until she stumbles over him. “This is a big bucks bed,” he says into her collarbone, “you can’t just leave without sleeping in it.”

She laughs. “That’s mighty presumptuous of you.”

“Want me to sleep on the floor? I will.”

“How ‘bout that desk chair over there? Looks real comfy.”

“I’m sure I’ll get a good, solid eight hours in that thing.”

“Shut up.” She kisses him and his hands are everywhere and her head swims from the vodka. As he lifts her shirt she tries to slow her mind down, to concentrate, to memorize how his skin feels against hers, the shape of his chest, the pattern of his breathing. It’s too fast, too much, and when he’s finally inside her she tips her head back against the pillow and closes her eyes. Flashes of the last time—the first time—come to her and she remembers the table digging into her back and how they both smelled like sweat. Now the bed is soft and the planes of his body hard and as she comes she moans into his mouth and he pulls away and looks at her, only for a second, and he looks so scared that she wants to hide. But then the moment is over and he buries his face in the crook of her neck as he comes and he pulls out of her and curls around her.

“I don’t know what you’re still doing here,” she whispers. “The chair is calling your name.”

“Shut up,” he says and he presses a kiss to her shoulder and she laughs.

\---

In the morning they’re quiet; he calls down to the front desk to get her an extra toothbrush and she showers and watches with wet hair as he dresses in his lawyer best.

“What time is your class?” he asks.

“Eight. I already missed it.”

“I’m sorry, you should have said something.”

“No, it’s fine, really. It’s just a lecture.”

He finishes tying his tie and turns to her. “Is this straight?”

“Here.” She adjusts it, although she knows Jeff Winger is more than capable of straightening his own tie. Sure enough, he uses their proximity to kiss her.

“Smooth,” she says with a smirk.

“I pride myself on my smoothness, you know that.”

She rolls her eyes. His arms are around her waist, holding in her in one spot, and she looks up at him. “You’re going to be late. You still have to check out. I should probably go.”

“Yeah.” He kisses her once more then lets her go, turns to his half-packed suitcase on the bed. “Look, Britta—”

“Stop. You don’t have to say anything, okay?”

“No, just listen. I don’t want to never see you again. You should come visit. Everyone would want to see you.”

“Maybe this summer,” she says. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“At least give me your number?”

“I can do that.”

He types it into his phone and she twists her hair up into a messy bun. “I’ll call you,” he says and Britta’s heard that line so many times, but never from him. She nods and he kisses her and without a word but instead a hard, burning look, she leaves. She doesn’t stop walking until she’s on the train and when she gets above ground again her phone beeps and on the screen is a text from a number with a Denver area code: _There was a two percent chance of us running into each other, you know. When you’re given odds like that, it’s rude to not take advantage of them. Get home safe._

She visits Greendale in July, spends Jeff’s days off wrapped in his sheets. She goes shopping with Shirley and Annie. She goes to the movies with Troy and Abed and Pierce. And when she leaves again, they’re the ones to help Jeff pack his things when he moves east.

**Author's Note:**

> three disclaimers:  
> 1) this is super self-indulgent so i could write a story set in boston  
> 2) i can't afford to even look at the fairmont hotel so all details are pretty fabricated, although i assume they have comfortable beds  
> 3) how does law work?????? we just don't know


End file.
